


The Long and Twisted Road That Leads to Your Door

by rosa_himmelblau



Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21662314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Frank's not sure how he got in the middle, but he knows he wants out.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	The Long and Twisted Road That Leads to Your Door

Frank was down to his skivvies, about to put his glasses on the bedside table, when Vince's voice wafted down the hall, calling his name. 

He was beginning to think moving in with Vince had been a mistake and this was one of the reasons. Frank couldn't tell whether Vince was lonely and needy or if it was just that Frank's proximity led him to expect he could engage with him at a moment's notice, with no thought to whether or not Frank was busy. Frank felt like a TV that could be turned on or off at the whim of its sentient owner. 

Possibly he was overthinking this.

Possibly he was being a little sensitive himself, but he'd been very clear that it was after midnight and he was going to bed, and either Vince wasn't listening, forgot, or just didn't care. _Get out of bed so I can talk to you_ was the message. 

"Frank?" Vince's voice had taken on a certain annoying querulousness. Then, "C'm'on, you gotta see this." 

And Frank knew that tone. Vince had discovered something on the internet he absolutely had to share right that very second, and he wasn't going to shut up until he did. 

Frank put his glasses back on, added his bathrobe, and went back to the living room. 

Vince sat on the sofa, hunched over to hunt and peck at the keyboard of a laptop computer that sat on the coffee table in front of him. There were four encyclopedias under the laptop: C, L, M, and T, to bring it up to a height that wouldn't render Vince a hunchback from his position, but he still didn't look comfortable. Frank did not ask why Vince had bought the laptop—which only travelled between the coffee table and the kitchen table—when a desktop would have been more practical. He'd asked that already and the answer had been, "I don't have a desk, Francis." 

Frank had refrained from pointing out that desks weren't terribly expensive and his house was practically empty of furniture. And that was why he didn't ask again; he'd again have to refrain and he didn't want to. 

"What is it?" Frank asked, leaning over the back of the sofa to peer at the screen. He could see some flashing pictures, but he couldn't read any of the words. 

"Something weird," Vince said. 

"On the internet?" Frank asked. "Say it ain't so." 

"Look at this." Vince jabbed at something on the screen but Frank had no idea what it was. 

"Help an old man out here and tell me what it says," Frank said, coming around to sit on the sofa. It didn't matter where he sat; unless it was facing him directly, he couldn't read the screen. 

"There's a guy making jewelry out of spent bullet casings." 

"What's strange about that? Is he leaving it at the homes of his victims or something?" 

"No, he's selling them." Vince was frowning at the computer. 

"What's strange about that?" Frank asked again. "People have been doing that a long time." 

"Yeah, I know." Vince said, and lapsed into a silence Frank was apparently supposed to sit and watch him brood in. 

"Well, this has been entertaining," Frank said. "Let me know if you find anyone making silk purses out of sows' ears, I might be in the market for that." 

"It's the name," Vince went on. Frank had the feeling this was how he'd talked to himself when he lived alone. 

"He's putting names on the bullets?" Frank asked. 

"No, it's his name," Vince said, and again lapsed into that silence. 

Frank waited a few seconds then snapped, "Vince. I am not your imaginary friend. You can't just summon me up, then mutter to yourself. If you have something to say, say it, or I'm going to bed."

Vince rubbed his eyes. "Sorry, Frank, this is just weird." 

"Not so far it isn't. Do you have information to impart or am I supposed to just sit and gaze adoringly at you while you think?" 

Now Vinnie laughed. "I'm not used to living with anybody yet." And offering Frank a notepad, he said, "OK, look at this." 

It was a list of nine names, none of which Frank knew, all of which looked sort of similar, sort of. "Who are these people?" 

"I think it's all one person," Vince said. "I think it's Roger." 

Frank looked at the list again. There were men's and women's names, and they did look vaguely anagramish. 

"And this is the one I just found," Vince added, picking up the laptop and handing it to Frank so he could see. It was a woman's name, Lorry Rococco. She was selling things on something called Etsy. Frank had heard of it, though he didn't know what it was. 

"You think Roger Lococco is selling hand-crocheted doilies, jewelry made of bullets, and—commemorative spoons?" At the last one, Frank peered at Vince over his glasses. 

"No," Vince said. "I think—" 

"Commemorative spoons?" Frank repeated more forcefully. 

"No," Vince said again, trying to keep the conversation on track. 

Frank was not, at this moment, interested in that track. "Commemorative spoons?" he said once again. 

"I love it when you use your 'he who must be obeyed' tone," Vinnie purred at him and winked. That was another problem with him; he didn't fear Frank in the slightest. 

"Tell me about the spoons," Frank said. 

"The spoons aren't the point," Vince tried, but Frank just looked at him. Frank's look didn't scare him either, but he did know to take it seriously. "Fine. I was buying you a spoon. From Mexico, because I know you didn't get yourself one, you were sick the whole time you were there, and I thought it would be a nice thing to do. OK? Now, about Rog—" 

"No, no, no, no, no," Frank said. "No. Not OK." 

"What's wrong?" Vince asked. 

"What's wrong is that, in spite of the good marks you got on the language portion of your SAT, you don't seem to understand the meaning of the word 'commemorative,'" Frank said, "To begin with, you buying me a spoon to commemorate—that is, to remember—a vacation we did not take together is ridiculous." 

"Ridiculous?" Vince asked. Now he was getting annoyed. 

"And presumptuous," Frank spilled a little gasoline on the spark. "It wasn't your vacation, it wasn't Jenny's vacation; lousy as it was, it was my vacation, mine alone. Nobody can commemorate it but me." 

"You were sick the whole time," Vince pointed out, as though Frank was somehow unaware of this. 

"Yes, Vince, yes, I was. Which is another reason you deciding I should commemorate it is ridiculous. It's like celebrating the anniversary of getting a stomach virus." 

Vince laughed at that. "I just thought with all those spoons you collected with Jenny—" 

"I did not collect them with Jenny; Jenny was just there for some of them. I collected them, for things that were important to me, like the moon landing and JFK's assassination, and then later when I did some traveling. I know, it's cheesy and cliched, but I started as a kid and it was what I could afford. I'll probably end up giving them to the Goodwill, unless my son wants them. Your spoon in that collection would make no sense; it would be an interloper." 

"My spoon is feeling pretty rejected right now," Vince said, and dammit, he actually looked like he was going to pout. 

"See if they'll take it back," Frank said callously. "Keep it for yourself. Use it to eat your Wheaties in the morning." 

"There is no spoon, I didn't buy one yet." 

"Good, because in this case 'yet' means 'ever.'" 

"Yeah, fine, sure. Now, do you want to hear about what I called you in here for?" 

"What did you call me in here for?" Frank asked obediently. 

"This's Roger." He jabbed at the screen again. 

"And again I say, you think Roger Lococco, once known as the Angel of Death, is now selling handmade doilies on Etsy?" 

"No, he's not. See, if you click on the doilies, there's a message." 

Frank clicked on the doilies and found this cheery little note. _Hi! So sorry I'm out of stock right now; I've been concentrating on the fabulous jewelry I make with the shell casings my sweetie-pie husband brings home from the firing range. Click here to take a look! And check back! New doilies are coming!_

Frank clicked and was taken to a page of brass jewelry. Not having an eye for that sort of thing, he had no idea if it was any good, but there was a lot of positive feedback. He clicked to the page with the spoons and found a message similar to the one about the doilies, only talking about not having found any in recent trips to the second hand stores. Frank laughed at that. "Where do you think he's getting this jewelry?" 

"He's making it," Vince said as though Frank were kind of slow. "He does metalwork, you know. His stuff's not bad." 

"And that's why it's the only one with any stock." 

"Yeah," Vince agreed. "You can't have a store with nothing but stuff you're out of." 

"He can't be that hard up for money," Frank said. "And even if he was, what's the point—" 

"Oh, for God's sake, go to bed! You're obviously too sleepy to follow any of this." 

"Following the twisted maze that is Roger Lococco's mind isn't that easy, sport," Frank said. "How long have you been working on this?" 

"Yeah, OK, about a week now." 

"So lay it out for me." 

"It started with me looking for the spoon. Do we have to have that argument again or can I just go on?" 

"Go on," Frank said. 

"I found a bunch of sources, but I noticed a weird pattern: the similar names. And of the ones with similar names, all of 'em were selling commemorative spoons and jewelry made from brass casings. At first I didn't give it any thought—I didn't even notice it. What I did notice was that none of them had any spoons to sell. But they did have the jewelry." 

"And this led you to leap to the conclusion that Lococco's involved?" Frank asked dubiously. 

"No, it led me to being confused! First, it's an odd combination. If the jewelry was made out of spoons—like those spoon rings that were popular back in high school—that would make some sense. But this just didn't. I saw identical stock and names with odd similarities, but I didn't realize I'd found Rog until tonight." 

"I didn't even know we were looking for him." 

Vince shook his head. "I haven't heard from him since Lynchboro, so I've been keeping an eye out. Then I found this Lorry Rococco. I always thought Roger's name was funny—I mean, really appropriate, being so close to rococo." 

Frank was feeling a little lost. "All elaborate curlicues?" he asked, making circular motions in the air with one finger. 

"Excessively ornate, intricate or complicated." Vince said, adding, "Four hundred on the reading section of my SAT. Not just good, Francis, perfect." 

"Bragging doesn't become you, Vincenzo," Frank said. 

Vinnie shrugged. "My math was only 375." 

Frank laughed. "OK, so what's the point? Is the bullet jewelry a cover for selling weapons or something?" 

"The jewelry's a cover for the spoons," Vince said. 

"He's selling black market commemorative spoons?" Frank asked. "Is there even such a thing?' 

Vince was laughing. "I kinda doubt it. Look. He opens the shop to use it to have a presence online as a person selling commemorative spoons, only he doesn't have any commemorative spoons. And he's not going to go out and buy some just to sell them again. So he adds something to his shop, something he can get easy. He's been doing stuff with brass casings for a long time, and since it's mostly girls on these sites, jewelry's a natural." 

"Yeah, I noticed most of the names were women's," Frank said. "So why the doilies?" 

"He's getting bored. The whole point of this was to get my attention, but instead of being more obvious, he went weirder and added doilies." 

"A rococo touch," Frank said. 

"Now you're getting it." 

"No, I'm really not. Why not just call you up?" 

Vinnie was exasperated with this question. "Oh, c'm'on, Frank! This is Roger! What fun is it to ring the doorbell when you can spend a year digging a tunnel and come in from under the basement?" 

Frank had to agree with that. "So you think all of this is just to get your attention." 

"Sure," Vince said. Frank was amazed at his absolute confidence that someone would go to this kind of trouble to get him to notice them. What was even more amazing was, he was probably right. 

"Why spoons?" Frank asked. 

"You're the one told him you got a collection," Vince said. 

Yes. He had. It had come up in one of their inane, silence-filling conversations in Lynchboro. Lococco had told him about the stamp collection he'd had as a kid, though Frank still wondered if he'd made that up. "That's still one helluva longshot though." 

"Not really. For one thing, we got no reason to think this is the only bait he put out." 

"Bait," Frank scoffed. "More like chum." 

Vince ignored him. "I should do some searches on parts for my car or something, I bet I'd find more names. If I gave it some thought, I could probably come up with a dozen different tacks he's taken. Besides, he's doing this for fun. People waste a lotta time on the computer, playing games. That's what Rog is doing, only he's waiting for me to play back." 

"And are you going to?" 

"Sure, but I don't want to make it too easy either. Gimme that," he said, reaching for the computer. 

Frank held it out of Vince's reach. "No. I've got an idea." 

For the next couple of hours, they spit-balled, argued, and laughed as they hashed out Frank's idea. 

The first step was to come up with the perfect name for someone with more than a passing interest in the possibility of buying doilies. The first argument was over whether the person should be male or female and they both switched sides more than once because Frank switching sides seemed to provoke Vince into changing his mind, and when Vince changed back, Frank was annoyed and reversed his position. In the end, they flipped a coin. 

Once they settled on her being a woman, the real arguing began. Frank wanted a traditional name, like Clara or Alma, picturing a little old lady in lavender. Vince, however, said that, no, she was looking for brass doilies, so she couldn't be too traditional, unless she was also senile. That got them laughing even harder, "My dear Miss Rococco," Vince said, and Frank typed, "I've never used one of these newfangled machines before, but my son gave it to me and through it I found your delightful site." Looking over Frank's shoulder, he said, "You misspelled site. It's s-i-t-e, not s-i-g-h-t." 

"I know that," Frank said. "The woman is senile, remember." 

"Alma was an English teacher," Vince said. "She might be senile, but she can still spell any word in the dictionary." 

"So we're going with Alma?" Frank asked. 

"If she's senile, sure. I was picturing her as a biker chick, but this is funnier." 

Frank paused mid-keystroke, considered saying something, but didn't. He corrected site, then typed, saying, "Your lovely brass doilies would be the cat's pajamas on my Kennedy rocking chair. Would you please send me your price list? I'm sure it's on your site somewhere, but my old eyes don't seem to be able to find it." 

Vince was giggling, a thing Frank seldom heard. "I love it, but I don't think those things, the ones you put on a chair, are doilies. I think they're antimacassars." 

"What, pray tell, is the difference?" 

Vince paused, staring at the ceiling. "I'm not sure. But Alma would know. Look up doily and see." 

Frank obediently looked up doily in Merriam-Webster online and found that a doily was "a small often lacy cloth or paper used to protect the surface of furniture," while an antimacassar was "a cover to protect the back or arms of furniture." 

"Huh," Vince said. "So an antimacassar could be a subset of doilies." 

"You want to make a Venn diagram?" Frank asked. "We can add place mats and coasters—and those stretchy things you put on glasses so you don't need coasters." 

Vince gave him an amused look. "You want to go back to bed?" 

"I never got to bed," Frank said. 

Vince shrugged. "You're gettin' punchy." He yawned. "And I'm gettin' sleepy." 

"So you want to go to bed." 

"No, I'm gonna make a pot of coffee." Vince got up and walked to the kitchen. 

"You're drinking coffee at three in the morning?" 

"Live a little, Frank," Vince called over his shoulder. "Tomorrow's Sunday, and I'm the one who gets up for Mass. You can sleep all day if you want to." 

Frank considered arguing with some of those points but instead he said yes to a cup of coffee. 

Being Vince's coffee, it was very strong. Vince brought it out black, but he also brought the little metal creamer that lived in the back of the fridge. Frank accepted the mug with thanks, then picked up the creamer and sniffed the contents. 

"If I wanted to poison you, I'd use something undetectable," Vince said. 

"I never thought it was poison. I just wondered how long it had been in the refrigerator." It smelled all right, anyway. Frank poured some into his mug. 

"Since yesterday. You don't like my coffee without cream, so I bought you cream. Well, half-and-half. Wouldn't want you to get too pampered." Vince sipped his coffee. 

"I gotta tell you, sport, I find this all pretty baffling." 

"It's just half-and-half, Frank. There's no big mystery to it. I like you and there's no good reason you shouldn't have stuff you enjoy." 

"I wasn't talking about half-and-half," Frank said. "I was talking about this whole thing." He motioned to the laptop. 

"You mean Roger? What were you expecting, straightforward?" 

"I wasn't expecting anything, though I see your point. But what I'm confused by is how you could reverse engineer Lococco's convoluted thinking." 

"I'm good at my job, Frank. And I know Roger; we're friends." 

"Are you?" Frank asked with genuine curiosity. Vince looked at him like he was stupid. "No, I'm serious. At least Steelgrave really liked you. You and Lococco don't act like you even like each other." 

Vince put the laptop back on its encyclopedia perch, picked up his mug, and took a sip of his overly-sugared coffee. "Yeah," he said slowly. "You're right. We're not friends because we like each other." 

Frank nodded at the laptop. "What's your newfangled machine say about the definition of friendship?" 

"Something about affection," Vince said, then added, "probably. Which fits. You don't have to like somebody to feel affectionate towards them." 

"Yeah, but that usually means you used to be married to them," Frank said. 

"Maybe comrade's a better word. I feel close to Roger, but you're right, I wouldn't want to spend an inordinate amount of time with him. But if any of the guys who worked security for Mel showed up looking for a hand out or a place to crash, I wouldn't turn 'em away. We've been in the wars together. Doesn't mean I want to spend time with them either. They're just friends I don't like." 

"Friends you don't like," Frank repeated. 

"Didn't you ever have friends you didn't like? You know, you hang out with a lotta guys, and some of 'em you were closer to—like me an' Mooch—but some of 'em you didn't like. But that didn't mean you wouldn't go to the movies or a ball game with 'em if there was nobody else around to go with." 

Frank shook his head, sipping his coffee. "I didn't have a gang I hung out with, I just had a few friends—people I actually liked." 

"We weren't a gang," Vince said sharply. 

"I didn't mean it like that," Frank said. "I've read your record, I know you weren't a JD." 

"Nobody says JD anymore, Frank," Vince said. 

"Well, I'm old, Vince" Frank said. "If you don't understand my archaic terms, you'll just have to look them up on that there newfangled machine." 

Vince chuckled. "You know, Alma still needs an email address." 

"Get her a hotmail account," Frank suggested. 

"Yeah," Vinnie grinned. "I like it. I'll try to use Alma as her screen name, then accept whatever they suggest, 'cause you know Alma by itself has to be taken already. Alma3156502897 or whatever. What about a last name?" 

"Peabody," Frank said slowly, pronouncing it the way they do in Massachusetts. "Alma Cabot Peabody." 

Vince, who had taken the laptop back, typed. "Where's she live?" 

"Pasadena," Frank said. "She has a pretty little flowerbed of white gardenias." 

"'Course," Vinnie said, and sang, "Go, Granny, go, Granny, go, Granny, go," under his breath as he finished filling out the info. Frank joined him. 

With that done, he went back to the message they'd been writing. "I look forward to hearing from you," Frank said, and Vince finished and signed it Cordially yours, Alma78532. He leaned back, stretched, arms over his head, then he leaned forward again and hit send. 

"I'm hungry," Vince announced. "You want a pizza?" 

"No," Frank said, "I don't want a pizza. But I'll watch you eat one if you want." It wasn't as though he could sleep after the coffee anyway. "Let me go put my clothes back on." 

It was when he was tying his shoes that Frank realized that he'd just helped Vince return Lococco's opening salvo. This wasn't the end of anything, it was the beginning—but the beginning of what? 

"Vince," he called, "what do you think Lococco's going to do next?" He was not comforted by the way Vince laughed in reply. 

-:-:-:- 

Epilogue 

The first doily arrived a week later. It was made of highly polished bronze, and Vince said it had been crafted with a metal punch. "Roger's got a bunch of them." The punched holes were smooth and identical. 

It was very pretty, Frank had to admit. It didn't bend, so it couldn't be used as an antimacassar. Vince put it on a shelf and put one of his mother's vases on top of it. 

"What happens next?" Frank asked. 

"I dunno. It's still Roger's move." 

Ten days later another brass doily arrived. This one was more intricate, made not with a metal punch but by weaving heavy brass thread in a way that made it look crocheted. 

"Now we're getting somewhere," Vinnie said. 

"Now is it your move?" Frank asked. He was equally afraid of both possible answers. Now that he'd had some sleep, Frank realized he didn't want to be in the middle of this game he didn't understand. 

"Look at this, Frank. It's better than the other one, but you couldn't use it as an antimacassar either." Vince put it on his one end table, with nothing on top of it. 

He was missing something, Frank knew that, but he couldn't figure out what it was. 

The third doily didn't arrive for another month. It, too, had been made with a punch, but barely. It looked like a child's attempt, if you would let a child play with a tool like that. The holes were small and random triangularish things. 

Vince laughed at it and dropped it in the trash. 

Later, when he was out, Frank fished it out and examined it more closely. He couldn't have explained why, but the holes reminded him of hearts. They didn't look like hearts, not really. But they reminded Frank of hearts. 

He hid the discarded antimacassar under the mattress, feeling very strange about it. 

Another of the amateurish ones came, but this time Vince didn't laugh. He seemed annoyed by it and he threw it in the trash with more hostility. 

Frank added it to the one under the mattress. He'd stopped asking questions. Mostly he was trying not to think about the weird battle zone he was living in because he had no idea what the war was about—though he was quite sure he didn't want to know. Questions would likely only bring him answers, and those were the last thing he wanted. 

Then, for several weeks, Lococco seemed to go into hyperdrive. A new brass doily arrived practically every day. Some were punched, some were woven; all were, to varying degrees, intricate. 

Vince kept them all. But beyond grading them—and none of them got above a B—he didn't say anything more about this game, and he didn't comment on Frank's lack of curiosity. 

Frank did notice that his spirits were higher than he'd seen them in a while, maybe since their arrival in D.C. 

Then, after a long day of meetings where Frank was repeatedly called upon to justify his existence—well, really the existence of the OCB, but it felt like it was his own existence he was defending—Frank dragged himself through Vince's front door to find something was different. He just didn't know what. 

There was an atmosphere in the house Frank couldn't quite put his finger on. Vince was nowhere in sight, but it didn't feel empty. In fact, it felt crowded. 

On the back of the sofa was what had to be the latest doily. It was made of the finest wire Frank had ever seen—brass, of course—and truly did look tatted. Frank had seen work like this before; it had been done by the women in his family, in days gone by. This looked like brass lace. 

Vince had to have bent it to make it fit over the back of the sofa because it didn't lose its shape when Frank picked it up. Still, it was what you could easily call a brass antimacassar. 

He had just replaced it on the sofa when he heard something from Vince's room, a soft, rhythmic sound. He opened his mouth to call Vince's name, then closed it, listening more closely. The next thing he heard didn't require close listening to hear. It was Vince's voice, and unless he was the most enthusiastic of masterbators, he wasn't alone. 

By the time he got to the front door, Frank knew Vince wasn't alone. He also knew the antimacassar hadn't arrived by mail. 

Frank got in his car, and with shaky hands, got the key in the ignition. He'd have preferred to just sit there for a minute, but he didn't want to risk being seen through the window because he wasn't going back in the house for a while. 

So, he started the car and drove slowly to the corner and turned. Then he pulled to the curb and sat. 

He wasn't shocked. He'd known about Vince and Roger from the time of the safehouse. What he was was embarrassed. This had been a near-miss of McPikus Interruptus, and he suspected Roger would be bitchier than Amber had been. 

What had him shook was the whole doily thing. It had been niggling his mind since the first one Vince threw away, and now it fell into place. This was some sort of weird mating ritual, like how some male birds had to build elaborate, colorful nests to be chosen by a female. Roger's first two nests were mediocre. His next two were just insulting. The rest had moved up the ladder, until at last he brought one that Vince found acceptable. And he'd known it would be, that's why he'd brought it in person. 

"Hey!" Someone tapped his window with a ring. It was an angry-looking woman Frank had never seen before. "Hey! You gonna drive that thing or what?" In the rearview mirror, Frank could see what was probably the woman's car. "Hey!" She hollered again. "This's my parking spot! You don't live here!" 

Frank hadn't even put the car in park, let alone turned off the ignition, so he took his foot off the brake and gently applied it to the accelerator. The woman stepped back. 

"Hey!" she yelled again. "You don't gotta run over my feet!" 

Frank kept driving. 

He didn't want to go back to Vince's place. But he didn't have any place else to go. 

He drove around, half-heartedly looking for a pay phone. There were plenty of those little kiosks, but most of them didn't have receivers anymore. Why would anyone want to steal a pay phone receiver? Frank couldn't imagine. 

Eventually he found one that not only had an intact telephone, but an actual booth. He dropped in a quarter and dialed. 

"Dan Burroughs, what can I do you for?" came the uncle's cheery voice. 

"Uncle, is there any way I can stay with you for a night? Two at the most?" 

"I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number," Dan said, still sounding cheery. 

"Ha ha," Frank said. 

"Things gone south with Vince already?" Dan asked. 

"Sort of," Frank said. He wanted to tell Dan everything except that he didn't want to say any of it aloud, or ever think about it again. He knew too much and it would be worse if he shared it. "Do you trust me?" 

"Depends," Dan said. "Are you going to try to get me to invest in your pyramid scheme?" 

"Nothing like that," Frank said, not bothering to be indignant about the idea that he'd ever be involved in a pyramid scheme. 

"Then, yeah, I trust you. Why?" 

"Because you're my friend," Frank said. "And I need you to trust me when I tell you, you really don't want to know what happened. But if you pester me about it, I will probably tell you, and if I do, you will not be able to unhear it." 

There was a long, long silence. "Yeah," Dan said. "You can stay with me as long as you need to." 

"Thanks," Frank said with relieved gratitude. 

There was one thing he had been very right about anyway: it had been a mistake for him to move in with Vince.

**Author's Note:**

> Except that it was the product of a conversation with a friend, I don't know where this came from.


End file.
